Nexteel dents Colorbond’s dominance of coated steel sector

Less than two years after it was established in Adelaide, a new player in Australia’s coated steel sector has put a serious dent into Colorbond’s dominance of the market.

Nexteel managing director John Easling at Booth Transport’s newly developed transport hub in Burton. Picture: MATT LOXTON

Adelaide manufacturer Nexteel has put a serious dent in Colorbond’s dominance of the coated steel industry less than two years after its launch by industry veteran John Easling.

Mr Easling, who established steel roll forming company Revolution Roofing in 2009, led the acquisition of painted steel company ColorGuard in July 2019 before revamping its product range and relaunching it under the Nexteel brand.

His plans were to shake up the industry and compete head-on with giant BlueScope.

With Revolution Roofing as Nexteel’s major customer, Mr Easling said the new brand had already secured 25-30 per cent of the South Australian coated steel market, and 10-15 per cent of the West Australian market.

“Nexteel now offers 27 new colour choices in our superior NextSTAR paint technology range – the first release of new colours in the steel roofing industry since 2013,” he said.

“Our expansive new colour range proved popular from the outset, but since August we’ve experienced a rush on bright colours and finishes featuring our market-beating thermal performance technology.

“As a result, we’re moving ahead with feasibility studies to set up Nexteel paint lines in other major Australian economic hubs.”

While Covid-19 had created a challenging environment for establishing a new brand, Mr Easing said Nexteel and related company Revolution Roofing had been able to retain their 240-strong workforce throughout the pandemic.

And after refurbishing its main paint line in Newcastle, Nexteel is considering opening additional lines in Adelaide, Perth and Melbourne.

Mr Easling said the company’s high-grade paint finishes had struck a chord with customers and had become a popular alternative for roofing, fencing, sheds and architectural facades.

“We have a high-grade paint finish called PVDF (polyvinylidene fluoride) which BlueScope doesn’t offer, and the colour and gloss lasts 50 years,” he said.

“We also use a higher grade of paint for our basic product, which is NextSTAR, and that lasts 10 years longer than Colorbond.

“We’ve got probably 80 or 90 builders contracted to use Nexteel – I’ve been thrilled with the acceptance from our customers of the product.

“We’ll continue to grow by growing the Revolution business and selling the boutique high-end architectural products – they’re much higher grade paint systems and Bluescope just don’t offer them.”

Mr Easling expects Nexteel to supply about 20,000 tonnes of coated steel into the market this year, with major projects including the Kwinana Waste to Energy plant south of Perth and a series of school upgrades across South Australia.

It is also supplying to Booth Transport’s new 13,800sq m transport hub in Burton, and the Ahrens family’s $10 million luxury expansion of Kingsford Homestead. It even named one of its colours, Kingsford Grey, after the historic Barossa Valley estate.

While border closures had forced Nexteel to pause plans to create a patterned steel industry in Australia, Mr Easling said he remained in talks with partner manufacturers in the US.

“The growing pace of the Covid vaccination roll-out in the US means we’re looking to reactivate our alliance with our partner business in California,” he said.

“This should see Nexteel relaunch our patterned steel initiative for commercial facades from July 2021.”

With aluminium composite cladding out of favour due to flammability, and the introduction of new regulations, patterned steel is in demand for use as commercial facades, Mr Easling said.